Sunday, 11 October 2015

How to come up with a Developer Friendly Bug Report?

One of the major jobs that the
software testers have to do is prepare a bug report for the developers to fix. Now,
a bug report is basically a bunch of mistakes that makes the software work in a
funny way which it is not meant to do. I think all of us will accept the fact
that we hate it when someone points out our mistakes! The same law applies to
the developers. They will loathe you for pointing out their mistakes. However,
you could make them hate you less by creating a developer
friendly bug report.

While
testing software, it is very obvious that you will come across loads of bugs,
which will keep increasing as more and more modules are added to the system. The
best way to deal with these bugs is to report them right away, so that the
developers can fix them as soon as possible before further complications arises
with the system and it becomes harder for them to fix it.

While
you are creating a report, make sure that each issue of your report covers a
single bug at a time. This will help the developers tackle less and easier for
them to fix. Even if you get multiple bugs in an issue, try breaking them down.
Piling up all the bugs together will complicate things and make it tougher to
resolve.

Try
to be as descriptive as possible. Describing the bug you faced while testing in
a short lot will keep the developers hanging and they will be at a loss of
information, thus making it harder for them to fix the bug. A detailed report,
on the contrary will allow them to understand the problem easily and they will
be able to come up with a solution in a shorter period of time without much
hassle.

Another
way to ease up the fixing job for the developers and making your bug report
developer friendly is by making it clear. While you are writing up a report,
make sure you use simple language that can be easily understood and dealt with.
You are not writing a novel, hence you don’t need to use fancy languages.

While
the idea of incorporation of your thoughts and ideas about the tested software
may be very tempting, try not to do it. Your report is meant to help the
developers to fix the bugs and nothing will help them more than the actual
facts that your test results have supplied you with. Stick to the facts and it will
make your report a developer friendly one.

Your
report should have a clear cut instruction of what you expect the developers to
achieve with the help of the bug report you have supplied them with. It should
also have a crystal clear image of what outcome you are expecting from the
fixing that the developers are about to do.

Keep
a section in your bug report which will have the methods that you used to
detect the bug so that the developers can get a hang of the methods you have
used which will give them a better understanding of the bug that they are about
to fix.

We hope that these pointers will
help you create a bug report, which will be well accepted by the developer.